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Chapter 7: The Lust for Power

Osho, I wonder whether you have considered the events of the last few weeks in light of the biblical story of the serpent in the garden - do you believe that a serpent came into your garden, and might it have the same results?

Perhaps you do not know my interpretation of the story. God is the criminal in the story. In the first place, to prohibit Adam and Eve from eating the trees of knowledge and the tree of eternal life. He provoked the desire in them. This is simple psychology. Otherwise in that garden of Eden there must have been millions of trees - Adam and Eve would not have found even up to now - which is the tree of knowledge and which is the tree of eternal life. Indicating the trees, prohibiting the children, is simply giving them a challenge. And nobody who has any integrity is going to obey such a thing. More emphatically, when the order is absolutely ugly and against humanity, what is the fear if Adam and Eve become wise, if they attain to eternal life? The God must be jealous, because then they will be exactly of the same status as himself - and he does not want to do that. He wants them to remain naked animals.

So according to me, the serpent is the first revolutionary and the first who brought humanity into existence. The whole progress, evolution, all science, all knowledge, everything is indebted to serpent, not to God.

My question meant to get at the temptation to power that Adam and Eve were presented with.

It was not a question of temptation for power. To be wise never makes anybody tempted towards power. Only idiots are tempted towards power. The wise simply laugh at the whole race that goes on for power, and somebody who has tasted the fruit of eternal life, what more is there to gain by power? The serpent was not tempting them for power; the serpent was simply telling them the truth - that God is afraid, he does not want anybody equal to himself. He remains to be in power.

So to me the story has a totally different meaning: the serpent should be worshipped in every church, every synagogue, and God should be put behind the bars in every prison. He was against all that has happened, because of the serpent. The serpent in the story is nobody but devil himself, taking the form of a serpent.

I want to emphasize the fact, because devil and divine come from the same Sanskrit root; they both mean God. Looking into this light, whom you are thinking as God must be something very ungodly, and whom you are thinking as devil is certainly divine. We need more serpents and less gods.